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Cancer-Detection Device Undergoes Testing

Virginia Business ObserverJanuary 1, 1999

A Hampton University nuclear physicist is testing a machine that
will allow doctors to find smaller cancerous lesions, earlier.

"It doesn't mean it's a cure," said Cynthia Keppel, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physics at Hampton
University as well as a staff scientist at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility's Applied
Research Center in Newport News. She said that with cases of melanoma, it
is more of a situation of keeping the lesions at bay.

"It does have the potential to extend life. Can it save lives? We don't
know yet," Keppel said. She developed the machine with Stan Majewski, Ph.D., group
leader of detector systems at Jefferson Lab.

The surgical instrument they developed is called an intraoperative beta probe and is only a few inches
long. It is inserted into an incision near the site of the cancer lesion. A sugar substance injected into
the blood adheres to cancerous cells, emitting radiation. The probe then detects the radiation so that
surgeons can remove it.

In the past, cancerous lesions had to be at least two centimeters to detect.

The machine, if medical tests prove it successful, could detect lesions as small as one centimeter.

This early detection would allow physicians to remove the lesions sooner, improving the chances for
recovery for the patient.

The idea for the machine developed at Jefferson Lab's medical instrumentation group, while Keppel worked
late nights doing research.

The initial tests were conducted at Duke University, which is one of the few university hospitals that
has an expensive, $5 million PET, or positron emission tomography machine, to detect melanoma.

In the study, a young man, diagnosed with melanoma, was given a year to live. However, there was no way
to locate the tiny lesions, even with the PET machine.

"There was no way to get it. It was too small to feel it," Keppel said.

But the beta probe device found the lesions so that they could be surgically removed.

The beta probe is one of many medical innovations coming out of Jefferson Lab, though Keppel stresses
she is not starting a spinoff company.

Unlike the company Dilon Technologies, which is also headquartered at
Jefferson Lab and involved in developing cancer-detecting technology,
Keppel says that she does not intend to start a company to sell the
product. Keppel, instead, will license the product, a patent for which
she submitted six months ago, so that she can do more
research with Jefferson Lab.

Patented Dec. 11 is what she calls her "holy grail," an invention that
will aid surgeons. The invention is a common cart, with common electronics, with a family of
different surgical instruments, all connected.

To accomplish the research, Keppel is opening a lab at the center.

Money for the research has been provided by a three-year, $130,247 grant
from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program and another
grant from the NSF through the Hampton University Nuclear High Energy Physics Research Center.